Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many further education providers are operating in the West Midlands; and how such providers there were in each year since 2010.

The number of learners participating at further education (FE) providers is published in the FE data library, available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/fe-data-library. The attached table provides the number of FE providers in the West Midlands region where learners have been participating in some form of FE provision from the 2010/11 academic year onwards. The attachment also includes the number of learners studying at general FE colleges in England and the West Midlands from the 2010/11 academic year onwards, broken down into age groups.